Visit to the New Campus

This is the library at Shi Da’s new campus, located in the countryside about 45 minutes south of Hohhot. It is a beautiful site, located amidst the open farmland that surrounds Hohhot. It’s also easy to visit from the old campus in the city where I teach, since buses run every couple of hours between the two campuses. Samuel, Grace, and I jumped on a bus last week and finally visited the new campus, which we had yet to see since our arrival in Hohhot.

Whether I’m in China or the Tri-Cities, when the cold weather comes I start to get cabin fever. I need to get outside to hold off the creeping sense of isolation and entrapment. Even though the weather has been pretty chilly lately (highs around freezing and lows around 8 degrees Fahrenheit), I’ve been doing a good job of getting out on my bike and meandering around the city. Sometimes I have a destination, but other times I just explore new streets and districts.

Like a typical westerner (meaning denizen of the American West not “the West” generally—although I’m a typical one of those as well), I get feeling “penned in” if I can’t get out of the city and hit the open road. At home, we usually make a point of busting out of overcrowded Richland, WA (population approx. 45,000) on winter weekends. We go on a hike along the breaks of the Columbia River or head up to the Blue Mountains for sledding and snow-shoeing. All it takes is making lunch and piling into our big American station-wagon (1998 Ford Taurus—about 20 mpg) and buying a forty-dollar tank of gas and we are free from society’s restraints.

Of course, it is impossible for us to hit the open road here. Not only do we not have a car (and if we did we could not read the road signs or navigate the roadways without hitting old ladies on bicycles), but arranging to do something like traveling to the mountains or the grasslands would require making extensive arrangements in advance with our hosts. Not that they would mind—people here have been so good about helping us out. But we don’t feel comfortable always imposing upon others.

And so it was last week that we were feeling hemmed in. It was a sunny day, perfect for escaping Hohhot (population approx. 1.5 million) and taking in the countryside. It occurred to me that we had not yet seen Shi Da’s new campus, located about 45 minutes south of Hohhot.

Looking North. The library (first picture in this post) is behind us. It’s really an impressive campus.

In fact, the first photos I saw of Shi Da—sent to us by Yongsheng in an email—were of the impressive fountains and gleaming red buildings of the new campus. I did not know at the time that there were two campuses and I imagined that I’d be teaching and living in the brick-red buildings that I saw in that email. In the end, I found out I’d be living and teaching on the old campus, located in Hohhot. It did not take long to realize that this was a good thing: instead of living in an isolated rural community, far from the markets, restaurants, and parks of the city, we were right in the center of things, living amidst the bustle of Hohhot. The teachers and students who stay at the new campus have very little to do except work and study—a good thing for studiousness, but not so good for sightseeing and urban exploration. It’s like the difference between the University of Washington and Washington State University: UW is located in the vibrant city of Seattle while WSU is in Pullman, a “cow town” with few sights except miles of rolling wheat fields. I grew up in Seattle and went to Pullman for college. I preferred Pullman as a student. It allowed me to study, ride my bike through the wheat fields, and row on the Snake River. And yet, if I was a Chinese teacher who had seven months to visit America, I would choose to teach at UW rather than WSU. I feel the same way about the difference between Shi Da’s new campus and the old campus, the countryside and the city.

Looking west with the library at our back.

The indoor sports complex.

Dormitories. My students, who live on the old campus in Hohhot, tell me that they would never want to live on the new campus because there is nothing to do there. In fact, the buses from the new campus are packed with students on weekend nights as students stream into Hohhot to meet with friends.

The kids enjoyed getting out of Hohhot for a few hours. They even liked the bus trip. Here they are in a staged action shot, running full speed!

Ice-cream break on the edge of a ravine behind the new campus. Except for the red buildings, the landscape could easily be confused with the Tri-Cities.

Plunging down the gorge after the ice-cream break. Is it Inner Mongolia or the eastern Washington? We even scared a covey of quail. Just like tromping along the banks of the Columbia River.

Maybe you can tell from the tone of this post, but everyone is feeling a little bit homesick right now. It might be the holiday season or it might be the small apartment, which is getting smaller as the weather gets colder, but the kids especially have been pining for home (“I want to go home!” has been a common refrain in our household as of late). Hopefully, when it’s all said and done, they’ll come to look back on their adventures here with fondness (or at least forgiveness). Day-trips like this one to the new campus will help.

Thanks for reading.

Dave

Construction Update!

Miles and miles of new construction ring Hohhot. This particular construction district, which is about two miles from Shi Da, goes on for miles. No picture can adequately convey the scale of new construction in the city.

This week in my classes we were talking about the past, present, and the future (tenses, that is). There is a conversation in the chapter (“This Neighborhood has Changed!”) where Matt and Tanya go home to see the vast changes that have transformed their old neighborhood. Matt and Tanya see “a construction site on every corner.” The “little grocery store” where they used to buy candy is now a “multiplex cinema.” A new shopping mall is being built where their high school used to stand. “Soon,” laments Tanya, “there will be just malls and parking lots.” “That’s because everyone has a car!” exclaims Matt. “Fifty years ago, people walked everywhere. Nowadays, they drive.”

Yes, it could be anywhere in the world—but I’m betting that Matt and Tanya grew up in Hohhot (and yes, there is a new multiplex cinema here). My students understand viscerally the changes that Matt and Tanya witness in their old neighborhood. When I asked them if their neighborhoods are changing, they gave me a list of changes that sounded familiar: new stores, more cars, paved streets. One of my students said that his neighborhood no longer exists—everyone has moved to the city.

Miles of nice new apartments like these are sprouting up amid the farms on the edge of the city.

What was so fascinating was that when their text asked the students to gauge whether “things have changed for better or for worse” in Matt and Tanya’s neighborhood, EVERYONE said “for better.” The authors of the text are far more nostalgic: they give the correct answer as simply “for worse.” From the first-world perspective of the textbook, such changes are shocking—neighborhood grocery stores changed into cinemas and schools into shopping malls. For my students, this sounded like progress, including the fact that people now drove everywhere instead of walking.

This entire neighborhood—only about a mile from Shi Da—was just being built when we moved here in the summer. The construction is not yet complete, but new shops are taking residence in new storefronts. At the far end of the street, you see shiny new luxury apartments still under construction.

Allen Greenspan and other cheerleaders for free market capitalism (neo-liberals) talk about capitalism as “creative destruction.” As societies embrace the market, older ways of living are destroyed but the process (in their view) is ultimately creative and desirable. New wealth generated from the “destruction” of traditional livelihoods, they argue, will lift the global masses out of poverty. I don’t endorse this view. Destruction may be wonderful for those benefiting most from the transition, but it’s pretty brutal for those who are displaced. But my students’ response would have warmed Greenspan’s heart. For them, China’s transformation to a market society is daunting but largely positive. Of course, they are also from China’s new middle-class. One of my students, Leon, comes from Wuhai, a gritty industrial town of 500,000 on the Yellow River. His family is among the Chinese nouveau riche. His father is a train engineer, but his mother speculates on the Shanghai stock market. Her luck has made the family’s fortune in the last five years, allowing Leon to come to university in Hohhot.

New construction shrouded in green mesh can be seen on almost every block. This one is on the “Second Circle Road” just about one mile south of Shi Da.

By most accounts, China is in the midst of a dramatic period of change and modernization. Some question whether China’s yearly 10% GDP growth is partly the product of fudged numbers: maybe Beijing is doctoring the economic reports? But no amount of hyperbole—nor doctored ledger books—could overstate the scale of economic growth and change that I see here in Hohhot everyday. Within blocks of our apartment (in what was recently the southeastern fringe of the city) you can see vast construction projects on a scale that is dumbfounding. Hohhot is no Potemkin village—there is real wealth flowing into the city, which is sprouting new luxury apartment complexes and shopping malls like mushrooms during the rainy season.

New apartment complexes line the Second Circle Road. A billboard advertises the good-life to prospective tenants.
Construction requires labor provided primarily by the Chinese countryside. Peasant migrations pour into the cities for work. Tyler, my American colleague, tells me that communism has eroded the Chinese work ethic. I’m not so sure. It seems like everyone is always working and you can hear the clanging of construction sites well into the evening, even on weekends. This woman is working at a site just down our street a couple miles where I have seen roads and apartments appear out of the dust in the last three months.
Yes, those are donkey-carts loaded with bags of cement. All available labor is driving China’s modernization. Maybe this doesn’t look efficient, but when you have the bodies—human and animal—who needs labor efficiency? The sense of movement and energy is truly amazing.

Societies often claim to have centers that hold the essence of their character. Beijing is the center of the Chinese government. Shanghai is the center of China's fantastic growth and modernization. New York is at the center of America's cultural life and Los Angeles is the center of our popular culture and Washington D.C is the center of our political life. And yet, if you really want to know about American politics you have to leave the beltway. If you really want to see the most vital art you have to leave New York. If you want to gauge America, you start on the fringes--in the exurbs and suburbs. In the nineteenth century you would have seen America most fully on the frontier. Philanthropic societies and reformers prevailed on the privileged and established East Coast, but the settlers were killing the Indians on the frontier--that was the heart of America at that time: Manifest Destiny and westward expansion.

The same might be true today of China. You need to go to its fringes to really see the new China. On the fringes, you see the transformation of village China into modern China. In Hohhot you can see the city literally chewing up the countryside; vast acres of farmland giving way to miles and miles of apartment complexes; new roads plowing into the countryside; huge stretches of construction where migrant construction workers squat at makeshift noodle tents before they go back to work. Hohhot does not have a large foreign population. It is not cosmopolitan. But the streets are increasingly filled with cars. Everyone, including the vendors with donkey carts and the peasants driving two-cycle tractors, seems to have cell phones. You can see the city changing before your eyes: new malls; five star hotels; McDonalds; KFC; Pizza Hut.

This is all happening in Hohhot.
I stopped my bike to take pictures of this wall of advertising surrounding a new construction zone on the edge of the city, and this guy stopped his bike-cart contraption to look at me.

Thanks for reading.

Dave

Beijing, the Olympics, and the New China

Grace, Samuel, and I at the Lama Temple in Beijing. It’s the biggest Tibetan Buddhist temple outside of Tibet.

It is hard to visit Beijing--like we did this last weekend--without reflecting on just how much the Olympics are going to change China. For sure, the Olympic craze is not just located in Beijing. The entire country (even Hohhot) seems to be mobilizing for this transformative event (including nearly 4000 people throughout China naming their newborns Aoyun, or "Olympics"). But certainly this mobilization is most apparent in Beijing, where the city is being modernized and sanitized. For many Chinese, Olympic preparations just mean more traffic and more headaches, or worse, dislocation from older neighborhoods in central Beijing. But for the Chinese government, the Olympics provide an opportunity to showcase the "New China" to the world.

This is when I visited Beijing: 271 days, 13 hours, 17 minutes, and 21 seconds before the beginning of the 2008 Summer Games. This large clock stands in front of an imposing government building on the eastern edge of Tiananmen Square. I apologize for the darkness: I took this photo at 6:30 A.M. While Arienne and the kids slept, I went to see the daily hoisting of the Chinese flag above Tiananmen—a popular activity for Chinese tourists to Beijing.

Our weekend trip provided the opportunity to reflect on the "New China," beginning with our departure from Hohhot's shining new international airport, just opened in mid-August, shortly after our arrival in Hohhot. As we waited for our flight--surrounded by China's business and government elite--we wandered through high-end clothing stores that sold khakis for 850 RMB (over $100) and cashmere sweaters for 2000 RMB (over $250), or twice as much as Chinese peasants make in an entire year and about twice as much as teachers at IMNU make in an entire month.

During our short flight to Beijing (Boeing 737 on China United Airlines, a small carrier), I browsed through the in-flight magazine, which looked just like in-flight magazines on American carriers. The first advertisement was a two-page spread for Mercedes-Benz, followed in succession by ads for the 2008 Camry, the "all-new Volvo S80," and the Cadillac Escalade. I had to flip through ads for Lacoste, Samsung, and PORTS 1961 (high-end Euro designer clothing), before I found the table of contents, which listed the following article titles in English and Chinese (unfortunately the articles themselves were written only in Chinese): "Monaco Beyond your Imagination;" "Treasure Up the Beautiful Time with Delicacies;" "The Story of Pearls;" "Passing the Wealth Torch;" "Chinese Elements in Hollywood;" and "Legacy Left by Pavorotti."

As we descended into Beijing, we passed over a beautiful golf course--a sport that used to epitomize the bourgeois leisure classes was now becoming popular among the Chinese elite. I could not imagine the drab grey communist world of the 1970s when western people were kept separate from the larger culture so as not to pollute the Chinese with their decadent ways. There are still concerns in China about "spiritual pollution" from the West, but no longer is China separated from western ways, especially bourgeois capitalism, which projects itself across the face of urban China with a dizzying onslaught of advertisements that makes American consumer culture seem tame by comparison. Ironically, the legitimacy of the communist Chinese government is now entirely dependent upon the continued expansion of China's market economy. As long as the communist party can keep China's GDP growing and can improve the material existence for a majority of Chinese, the party can maintain its hold on power (a big "if" given the increasing energy demands of the nation, environmental crises and limitations, and global market competition).

Riding bikes on Saturday, we emerged from a narrow hutong alleyway to see this view of modern Beijing, with sparkling buildings and luxury sedans.

Rob Gifford--an NPR correspondent who has recently written a book called "China Road"--says that since the 1990s, the Chinese government has made an unspoken compact with the Chinese people: don’t touch politics and you can do whatever you want. After the coercive and intrusive policies of the 1950s-1970s (such as Mao's Great Leap Forward and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution), leaving politics behind was a pretty enticing proposition. Chinese people bought the deal: they have opted out of politics to pursue more personal freedom in the marketplace. Gifford makes the metaphor that China used to be a bird cage but now it is an aviary--you can’t fly up into the clear blue sky, but you can move around with much more freedom.

But how long can such a pact last? How long until consumer freedoms no longer satisfy the majority of Chinese? The young generation (like my students) is the first to come of age after Deng Xiaoping's "Reform and Opening." They are apparently not political (some would say to the point of being profoundly cynical about politics), but they are the first generation in modern China to grow up with a sense of freedom and even rebellion. I have students who wear blue contact lenses, long hair, baggy jeans, and are greatly influenced by hip-hop music. In a recent China Daily, a promoter of the Chinese hip-hop scene describes the music as "anti-establishment." He says, "I think that mainstream kids are enjoying their first taste of rebellion here in China."

Hip-hop is clearly not political rebellion. But where will all this consumer freedom and self-expression end? Can the Chinese government really control the outcome of its devil's bargain with the Chinese people?

And this brings me back to the impact that the Olympics will have on Beijing and Chinese society in general. Can Chinese society truly "open up" to the rest of world for a short period of time and control the consequences? Can it police the boundaries of Chinese society during and after the Olympics as completely as it polices Tiananmen Square, which today is patrolled by a large police presence, video cameras, and hundreds of plain-clothes agents?

A large police presence keeps things orderly in Tiananmen Square. At 6:00 AM, after the police herded thousands of early-rising tourists (including myself) through two main gates, I tried to take a walk to the south end of the square, away from the crowds waiting for the flag-raising. No such luck. I guess gratuitous wandering time happens later in the day.

The friendly police state: a poster at the Tiananmen East subway stop.

Deng Yaping, a winner of four Olympic gold medals in table-tennis, believes that "The Olympic legacy for Beijing will not only be the venues, not only the roads, but for the Chinese people to know the world." She says the Olympics “will open Chinese minds, let them understand more about Western culture, history and way of doing things, ways of thinking."

If she is correct--if China is really going to open up to the world--then the Olympics might be even more profound for China than an opportunity to showcase its modernization and economic progress.

Well, I'm not trying to be a revolutionary or a know-it-all. Obviously, I have no clue about what the Olympics will mean. Maybe nothing. But looking at the physical city of Beijing (because that’s all I can do, since I don’t read or speak Chinese), it's hard to see a communist state (except for all the large-scale government buildings). On the other hand, it’s very easy to see an expanding capitalist society. What does this mean? Well, for one, “Hooters” is now in Beijing.

In the San Li Tun district of Beijing. Isn’t progress wonderful?

Thanks for reading.

Dave

A History of My Faculty Seminars on Teaching Methodology

I’d like to pretend that I deliberately gave this post the most boring title I could think of and that what follows is actually a hilarious high-octane spoof that will have you in stitches throughout. No such luck. Actually, this post is really, no kidding, a “history of my faculty seminars on teaching methodology.” Possibly the driest topic ever attempted voluntarily by a blogger (perhaps some have attempted drier subjects, but only under extreme duress and coercion). So thanks for reading this far! I have tried to make it not too painful (as in less painful than actually attending a seminar on teaching methodology), but it still may be hard to bear for those of you who are not me. Good luck to you.

Truth is, I put this picture here to get you interested in the post. It has no relevance to teaching methods or seminars, but it’s the kind of thing I see everyday on bike rides around the city. Endless construction and change. [more on that later]

The first six weeks I was here, I taught American history to faculty members in the International Exchange College (IEC) and Foreign Language Institute. That experience was rewarding, if not entirely interactive. It was mostly me talking and them listening (see post: "American History in Hohhot").

As I pondered the next set of faculty seminars I would give, I was not too optimistic about making them into interactive “seminars” instead of lectures. Chinese teachers--like Chinese students--expect teachers to teach and students to listen. My other misgivings concerned the subject matter of the seminars. Vice Dean Wu Yunna said that she wanted me to talk about teaching methods and classroom strategies. This held out about as much excitement for me as giving a seminar on cement. I know it’s corny, but I think teaching is a calling and that each teacher finds his own unique path (some would call it methodology) through a process of pedagogical self-improvement that has little to do with studying the "five types of learning styles" or the "six approaches to stimulating the learning process," or whatever kind of drivel they fill you with in university education classes or teacher conference seminars, where teachers sit in circles brain-storming ways to initiate "student-centered learning." Not that I'm against student-centered learning (whatever that means) or having a conceptual knowledge of one's own teaching methods and goals (I mean, knowledge is always better than ignorance), but I just think that teaching methods are a highly individualized thing best learned by individuals through practice and self-driven advice-seeking. Teaching is like the Tao: every teacher has to find his own path. But I am interested in teaching, obviously, so I figured that talking about teaching with Chinese instructors would be a great way to learn about the similarities and differences of our educational systems.

And then I received a phone call from Ms. Na Ri Su, who is the faculty lead in the Foreign Languages Institute. It was the Friday before the beginning of the October holiday and I was riding my bike to "South Lake," a really neat bike park about 8K south of Hohhot.

"Would you like to hear some suggestions about topics?" she asked.

"That would be great," I said, thrilled that the teachers already had some ideas for where the seminars might go--certainly a promising start for creating a dynamic forum where I wasn't just unilaterally dispensing information.

"One topic the teachers would like you speak on would be etiquette and table manners in the West."

I couldn't believe my ears. Did she really want me to discuss American table manners? I laughed. "Ms. Na, I'm certainly not an expert on table manners. I actually have very poor table manners and I'm continually being corrected by my wife. Did the teachers have any other suggestions?"

"Yes," Ms. Na went on, "they are also interested in having you discuss food culture."

"You mean what people eat?" I asked.

"Yes, the different food traditions and how they might differ from place to place. Of course you could go into great detail."

"That might be an interesting topic," I lied. "Did the teachers have any other suggestions?"

"They also wanted to know about churches. How many of them are there? What happens in the different churches and so on."

I was pretty shocked and wasn't sure whether to be embarrassed or insulted. Clearly the Foreign Language teachers could not have known that I’m a secular slob who can’t hold a knife correctly or recite the Lord’s Prayer. I could forgive them for that. But did the teachers not understand that I’m interested in talking about professional and intellectual issues? The topics they proposed could be discussed competently by most intelligent (and church-going) sixteen year-olds. Not that I consider myself a wellspring of intellectual depth, but "table etiquette"? Weren't they interested in engaging in deeper issues? I began to despair.

Fortunately, Dean Wu Yunna understood that I was interested in professional issues. Her insistence on discussing teaching methods saved me from becoming Mr. Manners USA in Hohhot. "Well, these are very interesting topics, but Wu Yunna told me she wanted something on teaching methods so perhaps we'll begin there and address these other issues later." I was privately hoping that new issues would emerge and we would never have to visit the topic of table manners again. In the end that’s what happened.

I went into the first seminar with a great deal of trepidation, but my fears were quickly assuaged. Only 15 teachers showed up--less than I expected. But I could not blame them: would I come to hear a visiting scholar on a Thursday afternoon at 4:30 pm and 6:00 pm unless I was forced? Probably not.

I was determined not to continue these seminars like the history lectures. I made a few introductory comments about American education (historical and contemporary conflicts between teaching "traditionalists" and "innovators") and then I broke the teachers up into three groups to discuss 1) Five things you know about Chinese or American education and 2) Five things you want to learn about American education.

It ended up being a great discussion. This post will be far too long if I bore you with all the details, but just to give you a sense of how rich that first seminar was, here are some of the points made by just ONE GROUP of my Chinese colleagues:

--Chinese education has been, and still largely is, "teacher-centric" rather than "student-centric." Chinese teachers are authority figures who focus on unilaterally dispensing knowledge to their students, who become passive receptacles of information.

--Chinese education has also been, and still largely is, "exam-centric." Teachers focus primarily on exam preparation, which takes precedence over classroom activities that may focus on participation, student interaction, and skill-building activities.

--Chinese students, for the most part, like this kind of teacher-centric education, because they are not trained to be active and engaged participants in their own education. They are by nature (or socialization) shy and reticent and they often resist efforts to force them into more active learning styles.

--Chinese teachers also like this style of pedagogy because they can more easily control what happens in the classroom.

--All of this is changing, especially at the university level and in larger cities, where a new breed of younger faculty are introducing new, western-influenced methods, that focus as much on problem-solving and task-based activities (active learning; “student-centered learning”) as they do rote memorization.

--Changes in teaching methodology are causing conflicts between traditionalists and innovators, just as has been the case throughout the history of American education. Just like Americans, many Chinese teachers and citizens worry that teaching innovations mean declining standards. They worry that students are learning less "information" than before.

Wow. And that was just one group.

Okay, I said I wouldn’t bore you with too many details, but here are some highlights from another group who made equally compelling points about both Chinese and American education systems.

Their primary points were as follows:

--It is easier to be accepted into an American university than it is to graduate from one. In other words, students in America can more easily become enrolled (as opposed to China where gaining admission to a university is very competitive, very expensive, and largely dependent upon exam scores and connections) but once enrolled, American students often drop out (as opposed to Chinese students, who are stewarded through the process from matriculation to graduation).

--American university life is very individualistic: students succeed or fail on their own merits, whereas in China (like at Shi Da), students moved through university life as "classes" rather than individuals.

In the discussion that followed, we agreed that perhaps American university life is too individualistic while Chinese university life is too communal. American students would benefit from greater community involvement, which might help retention efforts, but Chinese students might benefit from less hand-holding and more individual responsibility.

You can get a sense just from these talking points that we had a great discussion. I was really pleased with how interactive the teachers were, and how honest they were in assessing both the strengths of weaknesses of both Chinese and American systems. Moreover, their many comments provided me with ample discussion topics for the weeks ahead. In subsequent seminars, we touched on thorny issues like “academic freedom” and “ideological” training in Chinese universities (more on that to come in later posts). I was really enjoying myself.

And yet, things were not so perfect. Over the course of the following weeks, I began to doubt whether the Chinese teachers were really as enthusiastic as I was. For one, the attendance of the seminars began to drop (from a high of 30 teachers in week 2 to a low of 7 by week 4). I was told the teachers were busy, or had meetings. That was fine. But not having a fixed group of teachers who came every week made it hard to establish trust, common understandings, and progressively explore new topics over time. I felt like each new seminar was starting over.

And despite the fact that the teachers were all very attentive and kind, it was entirely unclear to me whether they were interested in these seminars. In fact, I realized the only questions they were asking were ones that I made them formulate in groups. Beyond that, "discussions" were largely me asking questions and them giving the very shortest answers possible. Was it a language thing—not wanting to lose face by making comments in less than perfect English? Was it a cultural thing—passive students waiting for the teacher to expound? Was it a discipline thing—I’m a history teacher and they are language teachers?

By week four I was feeling pretty insecure. I didn’t know what topics to explore. I didn’t know how many people would be in class, if anyone. I had been asking a lot of questions but hadn't been giving a lot of answers. Chinese teachers, like Chinese students, value expertise, and I wasn't acting like an expert. And yet, as I pondered what to do for the next class, the last thing I felt capable of being was an expert. Not that I couldn't go in and run a powerpoint on some topic. But I'd die of boredom. I had to be enthusiastic about something, but my enthusiasm was waning.

I talked with WuYunna that week and she apologized that the IEC teachers hadn't been to the last seminar--they were at meetings. I asked her what the teachers wanted to learn and she reiterated that she wanted them to learn about teaching methodology--something that would help them to become better teachers. But what could I really teach language teachers about effective teaching methods?

After some “in-depth research” into the latest language-learning teaching methods (about an hour on the internet plus phone calls and emails to my CBC colleagues Barb Sandness and Yongsheng Sun), I decided that I was most taken with the humanistic approach, which seemed to mesh with my most idealistic conceptions of education. In this method, teaching language is less about grammar than it is about helping your students unleash their human potential through problem-solving, reasoning, free-will and cooperation. The goals of language teaching in a humanistic classroom are ultimately about "advancing the species through understanding and cooperation," at least according to some English web site. This sounded really good--a good way to keep me from teaching grammar. It also jibed with my own inclination to take the long-term view of the classroom--it was about the student's development as a human being rather than some more modest and measurable outcome--a good way to keep me from measuring outcomes.

But how did the humanistic approach provide insight into teaching methods? Well, according to this English website, the humanistic approach encourages you to understand what motivates your students. If they are externally motivated (they need to pass a test or get a certificate), then throw a lot of exams and exercises at them. If they are intrinsically motivated by the pure love of knowledge (like about 95% of my students at CBC), then have them solve problems and work things out.

Great--I could ask teachers to brainstorm what motivates their students. They could break up into groups and then report back. It would be fun and I'd get to hear their views of Chinese students.

I was pretty happy with myself. One question. No lecture. No powerpoint presentation. Group work. Cutting-edge stuff.

I took a pad of paper with nothing but one quotation written on it, from Socrates: "I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think." (I love the internet...)

I strode into the seminar room to see that my class had now shrunk to seven teachers--the ones who had been threatened with dismissal if they didn't attend.

Undeterred, I went ahead with my plan. We broke into a group to discuss the motivations of our students. One teacher who teaches Business English immediately began to talk about how her students lack the theoretical knowledge of economics. She then began to show us the curve that analyzes the upward and downward course of "producer" nations and "imitator" nations. There went my focused group project. Like teachers everywhere, we all had a lot to say, little of it relevant to my initial question. But we did talk about both economics and ethnicity (or, as the Chinese say, "nationality"), two topics that trump teaching methodology any day, in my opinion. [and more on that in later posts, as well]

Well, I just wanted to give you a sense of what I’m doing from week to week, what I’m experiencing and learning in the classroom, etc…. It’s been really rich and rewarding—and it continues. I’ll be heading into another seminar this week with little idea where it will end up.

Thanks for reading!

Dave